


The Texture of Sympathy

by motsureru



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Character Study, Dark, Death, Ficlet, Gen, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-19
Updated: 2007-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-11 19:22:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motsureru/pseuds/motsureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a very unseasonable Wishlist gift for <a href="http://xkeiriax.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://xkeiriax.livejournal.com/"><b>xkeiriax</b></a>, who wanted “ A MYLAR fic where Sylar kills Maya.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Texture of Sympathy

 

She bled all over the floor, a thick, oozing puddle that he almost felt sorry about.

It caused a terrible mess, splatters and smears all over tile that made part of him twitch and long to swipe it clean in slow, methodical strokes. Her hair was tangled in it too, long locks of dark sticky strands and knotted, awkward strokes of blackness curled against themselves from where fingers had yanked and thrust.

Sylar tilted his head and watched her still face, studied the way slack, smooth skin curved over her cheek bones, no longer bearing that cheerful, unknowing smile. She lost it quickly, the first night. When Mohinder had seen Sylar’s face and she had seen his, fully aware that Mohinder was not the Doctor Suresh she had so sought so desperately. She had come to like Mohinder soon enough, though, and very quickly the door to belief in Gabriel had closed in his face with a trembling shudder.

He rubbed the blood slowly between his fingers and stared at its color, took in its texture. He had almost expected it to be black like her plague, and yet here it was, as red as anyone else’s. He hadn’t thought her different, really; he hadn’t cared to think too hard on her in the first place. She was a means to an end, but she had helped him get this far, and for that he felt he might have owed her the slightest touch of sympathy.

The thought was a fleeting one.

She had ruined it.

A week of tentative but jovial conversation with Mohinder, of brief glances Sylar was sure he didn’t misconstrue beyond what they were- he knew exactly what they were, in spite of the complicated intimacies and intricacies that characterized them so often. But sooner than he could mend those bridges he and Mohinder had once seen burned, Maya had stepped in to fill the fissure.

She had, one day, reached a hand across the table and so gently wrapped her fingers around Mohinder’s palm as he typed, speaking in soft, melodic words of Spanish. Lifted those deep, doe-like eyes to the man’s and smiled in that innocently sensual manner. Mohinder had looked startled, at first, flabbergasted for an instant by whatever she had chanced to say, risked to reveal. And then the corners of his lips dared to turn upward in some warm acceptance, some flattered gesture. Perhaps she had thought herself clever and covert, behind it all. Perhaps she thought her brother and Sylar alike would never notice. 

But Sylar understood. He always understood. People could be no more complicated than cogs and crowns, no more opaque than crystal coverings.

Sylar’s lungs filled deeply and his thoughts scalded trails of vehemence through his brain. She was in enemy territory, now; she had compromised what Sylar considered his own.

“Gabriel?” she had questioned sweetly as she looked up from the cutting board.

Alone at last, but this was not whom she hoped to speak with. The very name set his blood ablaze, blistering through his skin. 

He had used his fist this time; it was that much more gratifying. He had struck her hard across the temple and before her power could even manifest grabbed her by the jaw and beaten her head into the tile until there was hardly a skull left to peel back. Thud after satisfying thud until it was a thump and finally a wet crackling and splatter that made his skin crawl with excited goosebumps and his lungs expand shakily in satisfaction.

His fingers slid from her jaw and her matted hair carefully, as if she had been a delicate doll once, one with whom he was finished playing. Were he Gabriel he might desire to fix her, but Gabriel had no place here. Were he Sylar he might long to gaze into that open head, to see if he’d left even a tiny salvageable remnant amidst the glop and goo of what had once been a promising project. But he was too disgusted with her to even care about a new ability, this time. She had touched, yearned for, _coveted_ what was his. Not Gabriel, not Sylar, but the man that was privileged to Mohinder as his own was the one who would not stand for that. He’d been her angel of mercy, once, but for people who dared to take away the only thing in the world he wanted more than power, there was no sympathy to be had.

Sylar rubbed slick fingertips over slick fingertips and then pressed them thoughtfully to his lips. Closing his eyes, he tasted the copper and crimson and tilted his head, releasing a faint breath of contemplation. Mohinder would be home soon. Perhaps he’d need to clean a little after all.


End file.
